Yahoo and Microsoft used the press to negotiate for several months regarding a potential merger. Now it appears Acer and Microsoft are having a public spat. Or, if they aren't yet, Acer's comments Wednesday will likely start one.
In an interview with VNUNet.com, Acer Vice President of Marketing Gianpiero Morbello said his Taiwanese PC maker has big plans to develop the market for Linux, not only on its low-cost ultraportable, but on the company's laptops as well.
The Acer Aspire One is just the beginning of Acer's foray into the Linux world, according to a company exec.
(Credit: Acer)The reason is because of the cost and operation of Microsoft's operating system over open-source Linux.
"We have shifted towards Linux because of Microsoft," said Morbello. "Microsoft has a lot of power and it is going to be difficult, but we will be working hard to develop the Linux market."
Acer officially unveiled its entry into the low-cost mini-laptop market, the Aspire One, on Tuesday. It will come in both Linux and Windows XP flavors.
It makes sense to try to cut as much cost as possible out of building a device like the Aspire One, which will start at $379. The attraction to such a device is mainly price, and expectations of a full set of features can be relatively low. Plus, as Acer points out, Linux has a quicker boot time and can extend the battery life of tiny Netbooks like the Aspire One.
But will mainstream PC shoppers go for Linux when they're used to buying a Windows notebook? It's unclear if Acer, currently the No. 2 notebook seller in the world, will be foisting Linux on reluctant consumers or just looking harder for places and markets that have yet to fully embrace Windows.
Lenovo first introduced its new consumer notebook line, IdeaPad, back at CES in January. Now, the smallest--and arguably best-looking--of the bunch is set to ship to consumers very soon.
The U110, Lenovo's foray into consumer-oriented ultraportable notebooks, is now available on Lenovo.com, with other retailers soon to follow.
The U110 IdeaPad from Lenovo.
(Credit: Lenovo)The U110 comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6-gigahertz processor, 120GB hard drive, 2GB of RAM, and comes loaded with Vista Home Premium.
The screen is 11 inches wide with no bezel and weighs in at a mere 2.4 pounds. The battery life with the original battery is 2 hours, which leaves a lot to be desired. (But the extra battery increases your mobile computing time to 8 hours, Lenovo's vice president of consumer products, Mike Kuptz, assures me.)
The U110 also comes with Dolby-branded sound with four speakers plus a subwoofer, as well as an integrated camera with face-recognition software so a person's face can be used in place of a password.
But the look is what will lure most potential buyers in. Lenovo's clearly spent a lot of time trying to make their ultraportable standout from its all-gloss white/black/pink competitors. The U110 comes in red or black, but has a great vine-patterned texture on the outside lid. The price, however, is not nearly as appealing. The basic version is $1,899. That's more than a MacBook Air, which is aimed at essentially the same market: the person who's always on the go.
The U110 will be sold in some national retail chains, like Office Depot, Micro Center, and Tiger Direct stores, but it won't be available at the largest outlets for notebook sales, Circuit City or Best Buy stores. It will, however, be available at BestBuy.com, NewEgg.com, TigerDirect, and others.
Make sure to check out the CNET Reviews hands-on video here.
LAS VEGAS--As a computer, the Eee PC from Asus is intended to be the opposite of intimidating--it's made for children after all. But its potential as a market force is apparently giving chills to its larger industry peers.
Here at Sony's annual Open House event, the senior vice president of Sony's IT product division said the tiny $299 notebook could potentially shift the entire notebook industry.
"If (the Eee PC from) Asus starts to do well, we are all in trouble. That's just a race to the bottom," said Mike Abary.
The Eee PC at its U.S. launch last fall.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)He means that if mainstream PC buyers start to find their needs met by a lightweight, simply featured, inexpensive portable, it's likely to impel all of the major players in the industry to pile on by lowering their prices. And that's in an industry with already low margins for retailers and manufacturers.
If the Eee PC just catches on with Linux developers, enthusiasts, and the tech-savvy early adopter crowd, that's fine by him. "But if mainstream buyers buy it, then, whoa," Abary said.
So should Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and their ilk be frightened of Asus? So far, the version of the Eee PC in the U.S. only comes with Linux, but that will soon change. Japan got its Windows XP version last month, and the U.S. should be getting one in the next few weeks. (See the full review of the Eee PC by CNET's Dan Ackerman.)
And even with just the open-source version available stateside, the numbers say it's striking a nerve: the company reported moving 350,000 units of the Eee in the first quarter it was available last fall.
Sony's not the only one taking notice. Acer is reportedly readying an Eee competitor, and the yet-to-be-officially-announced HP Compaq 2133 was developed with the Eee firmly in mind.
As for Sony, though it did start offering lower-priced notebooks last year in the $800 range, don't expect the company to go any lower just yet. Abary says so far the company is just "keeping an eye" on the Eee's activity.
Sony has always positioned itself as a premium brand, and will continue to do so, as was evident in the rest of its PC offerings on show here.
A Vaio to match your crocodile-print shoes.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)The company has been at the forefront of the uber-personalization trend that's taken over the notebook industry. By charging more, the company has more leeway with the options it can offer customers. It began doing colored laptops three years ago and is now branching out into personalized patterns, and--as suspected--textures.
People who buy their Vaio at the SonyStyle store online have as many as 36 different choices for personalizing their laptop. The Graphic Splash line has three different patterns and multiple color combinations, as well as a choice of font on the keyboard. "That's what consumers really, really want," Abary told a gathering of reporters earlier in the day.
Sony also said that Vaio as a brand sells particularly well with women, which could also explain Sony's increased emphasis on personalization. Though 80 percent of notebooks sold industrywide are owned by men, Abary estimated, Vaios' percentage ownership by men is in the low 70s, indicating a higher-than-average ownership rate by women.
But it's not all about appearances. Sony is also pushing its lineup of home theater PCs, which are not primary PCs, but still start at $1,699.
The TP series home theater PC is now a Blu-ray player too.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)Though Sony had earlier indicated that its TP home theater PC (that white round one), didn't sell particularly well last year, it still decided to bring it back for Round 2. It's still round, but now it's got some high-definition guts. Sony beefed it up with a Blu-ray Disc player, Intel Penryn processors, and two Cable Card tuners. It's also now available in black for $1,699 to $3,000.
Though it was released in the fall, the all-in-one PC from Sony, the LT, is part of the same strategy. Again, though it's a PC like Gateway's One or Dell's XPS One, Sony positions the product as a TV with PC capability instead of the other way around. Doing so is likely to lure more high-end customers, with the LT's Bravia-like bezel echoing Sony's line of LCD TVs.
The latest incarnation of the ThinkPad makes its official debut Tuesday.
The X300 from Lenovo is, you may have heard, rather waiflike in size.
Something else that fits in a manila envelope.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Weighing in at just under 3 pounds and measuring less than three quarters of an inch at its skinniest point, the X300 has already been poked and prodded by plenty of tech reviewers.
CNET's own Michelle Thatcher called it her "new BFF" of ultraportables. See for yourself whether promises of 10-hour battery life, a 64GB solid-state drive, a variety of ports, and a starting price of $2,799 are charming enough to lure you in too.
Check out Michelle's full review here.
If you are accident-prone and like choices, perhaps the new Panasonic 7 Series Toughbook is for you.
The notebook version of the new 7 Series Toughbook from Panasonic.
(Credit: Panasonic)Panasonic will introduce three versions of the new business-rugged notebook Monday evening. The ultraportable W7, tablet T7, and slim Y7 notebook. All come loaded with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and weigh between 3 and 3.7 pounds. (The 14-inch notebook is the heaviest of the three, if you can call 3.7 pounds "heavy.") They also come equipped with Bluetooth 2.0, and built-in Wi-Fi and mobile broadband from AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon. The notebook and ultraportable have DVD Super multi drives, while the tablet nixes the optical drive in light of space and weight considerations.
The company has termed these three notebooks "business-rugged." What they mean by that is that these will likely survive a decent amount of abuse sustained over the course of a normal business day for people on the go. They have magnesium-alloy casing, shock-mounted hard drives, and flexible internal connectors, and the casing can survive a 1-foot drop, while the hard drive can withstand a 2.5-foot drop.
In addition, it should stand up under heavy pressure. The 7 Series was designed with the Tokyo subway system in mind, where business folk pack themselves in like sardines for the daily commute, according to Panasonic. Its engineers found that standing on a train with people crushed in on all sides can create more than 220 pounds of compression force on you and your briefcase and notebook.
The 7 Series also adopts the "spill-through" keyboard used in the Toughbook 52 Series.
The notebook version is available now for $2,449, while the tablet and ultraportable will be for sale next month starting at $2,099.
The long-rumored mini notebook from Apple could be making its debut relatively soon, the AppleInsider blog is reporting.
Citing "people familiar with the matter," AppleInsider says the latest notebook form factor from Apple will be introduced at January's Macworld Expo, held every year in San Francisco. Over the past year, several clues have pointed to Apple developing an ultraportable to round out its notebook lineup.
The report says the computer will have a 13-inch LCD screen, which will be lit by LEDs (light-emitting diodes) like the current MacBooks, and weigh 50 percent less than the current model 15-inch MacBook Pro. AppleInsider also says the ultraportable will use flash memory instead of a traditional mechanical hard drive. What it won't have, is equally notable: apparently Apple nixed an optical disc drive to maintain an ultraslim design.
Note: This blog has been corrected to reflect the new price of the OQO Model 02.
I wonder if it's OK to feel bad for UMPCs. They're cute, cuddly (OK, maybe not) and perhaps even useful, but unfortunately, not very practical. The PC industry wants us to buy them, but very few of us are biting so far. Part of the problem is how expensive they are--more than twice the price of the cheapest notebook--which is why the price drop of the FlipStart is fairly good news.
(Credit:
FlipStart Labs)
Not great news, though. Chopping $500 off a UMPC that was originally $1,999 is nice and all, but it's still $1,499 for a palm-sized computer.
OQO also recently lowered the price of its Model 02 ultramobile PC just a few months after its launch, bringing it from $1,499 to $1,299.
The FlipStart debuted earlier this spring and keeps its same feature set: it's still a 6-inch-by-4.5-inch miniature notebook, with a 1.1-Gigahertz Intel Pentium M processor and a 30GB shock-mounted hard drive.
It runs the full version of Windows XP Professional or Vista Business and has a variety of cool inputs, but it's difficult to figure out why exactly the mass consumer would need one of these in light of options of powerful smart phones that are much cheaper and more portable. And if power plus mobility is what you want, notebooks are getting smaller and easier to lug around.
(Credit:
Asus.com)
With a black piano finish and a leather wrist rest, the Asus U3 joins the Apple MacBook and the Sony VAIO SZ in the ranks of sleek-looking 13.3-inch laptops. Like the others, the U3's 13.3-inch display size definitely hits a sweet spot between portability and usability; its 3.9-pound weight (granted, that's with the tiny three-cell battery) straddles the line between ultraportable and thin-and-light. The screen is large enough for watching movies or to comfortably make it through a workday without squinting.
The Asus U3 incorporates a boatload of professional-level upgrades, including Intel Turbo Memory, 3G wireless, and integrated GPS options, plus a fingerprint scanner and Trusted Platform Module for security. It all runs on Intel's latest Core 2 Duo processors and the Intel GM965 chipset, plus a 128MB Nvidia GeForce 8400M graphics card and a single memory slot for up to 2560MB of RAM. There's even an HDMI-out port.
What it doesn't have: an integrated optical drive. To read and burn discs you'll have to use the (included) external drive. It also doesn't have an official price or availability date, though Laptoping.com, where we spotted this news, cites unofficial reports of a $2,000 price tag and a September ship date.
(Credit:
Sony)
Sure we've seen it in Japan for months, and you can actually order one from gadget importer Dynamism.com, but we're still pretty excited that Sony is finally releasing the Vaio TZ laptop here in the good ol' U. S. of A.
Last night, at the event space on top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza (known as the Top of the Rock), Sony showed off what the company calls a "new line of richly designed, high-performance ultraportable notebooks." For once we pretty much agree--even with an 11.1-inch LED backlit display, Web cam, carbon-fiber casing, and a full-fledged Core 2 Duo CPU (not a wimpy Core Duo or Core Solo), it's impressive that the entire package still squeezes down to less than 1-inch thick. It's also got integrated WWAN (via Sprint), which is quickly becoming a must-have for ultraportables.
Of course, all this pint-sized goodness doesn't come cheap. The basic model starts at $2,299, and if you add the optional 32GB flash-based, solid-state hard drive, you're talking $3,000.
The Vaio TZ is available in classic black, premium carbon, champagne gold, and hand-painted Bordeaux, starting today (although the SonyStyle Web site lists the TZ as shipping around the end of July).
Today, Averatec announced the new 1579 ultraportable laptop, which features an 11.1-inch wide-screen display, 1-inch thickness, and 3.4-pound weight. The rest of the specs:
- 1.06GHz Intel Core Duo U2400 ultralow voltage processor
- 1GB DDR2 RAM (1GB max)
- 120GB, 5,400 rpm hard drive
- Dual-layer DVD burner
- Three USB 2.0 ports, an ExpressCard slot, and a 4-in-1 memory card reader
- Windows Vista Home Premium
Because we're used to Averatec pricing its laptops so aggressively, the new laptop's $1,300 price tag struck us as merely average for its specs. Nevertheless, the Averatec 1579 promises to be an affordable alternative for home users who want an ultraportable laptop but don't want to pay the premium for a business-class machine such as the Sony VAIO TXN17P/B.
